Three candidates for the Woodland Park School Board of Directors will be holding a meet and greet on July 22 at Memorial Park.
Candidates Mike Knott, Keegan Barkley, and Seth Bryant will be in attendance, which will be held between 12:30-3:30 p.m. The three will kick off their campaigns for the November election by outlining their stances on the issues facing the district.
Hot dogs will be served.
— Read on gazette.com/content/tncms/live/
Author Archives: Matt G
‘Refugees’ from Woodland Park heading to Manitou schools –
Woodland Park School District has gone off the rails.
The new superintendent and school board members think that’s a good thing, as they say those rails — mainstream public educational practices — were not properly educating their children. Many students, teachers and parents have protested the new policies and see this as an extremist right-wing takeover.
— Read on pikespeakbulletin.org/featured/refugees-from-woodland-park-heading-to-manitou-schools/
Colorado Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award (Gateway Elementary)
As previously reported here, Gateway Elementary was honored with the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award recently! The thing is though, no one in Woodland Park seemed to know about it until I posted it on Facebook. We found reference to it on the CDE’s website, and a couple weeks after making this info public, the district did finally issue a press release about this.
I learned via CORA that Superintendent Ken Witt received two emails from the CDE about this back on April 27th (email 1, email 2). Here’s what Witt received:
Good morning,
On behalf of Commissioner Anthes, I am pleased to invite you to participate in CDE’s School and District Awards Ceremony on Thursday, May 18 from 2:00-4:30 p.m. to recognize the achievements of your district from 2022!
The award designations for 2022 were noted on School Performance Frameworks, and our Competitive Grants and Awards team will be reaching out to you following this email with a list of your award recipients.
We are hoping that you can attend the awards ceremony and reception and look forward to hearing from you. Knowing that it is a very busy time of year, we will also be delivering award banners and certificates to districts who are unable to attend. Attached you will find an invitation with event details including how to RSVP.source
Kindest regards and congratulations,
Rhonda Haniford
Not only was our district a no-show at the awards ceremony, but I’ve heard nothing about any of the promised award banners and certificates. It’s not clear why the board and superintendent are handling this the way they are.
DAVIS: The Specialists: A Woodland Park Investigation
From the outside, the events unfolding over the past year and a half in Woodland Park – where a far-right school board won control in late 2021, and has since pursued an aggressive agenda of banning certain books, demonizing the local teachers’ union, cutting funding for mental health services, skirting open records and public meetings laws, approving a highly controversial charter school without due process, and firing staff and faculty for speaking out against them – seem like an extension of the right-wing’s long standing animosity to the public school system. On closer inspection, though, what’s happening in Woodland Park looks like something new: an evolution of that old fight, where the goal is no longer to shrink and dissolve the public schooling system, but to seize control of the system and use it to train up a new generation of conservative voters.
— Read on coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/06/davis-the-specialists-a-woodland-park-investigation/54189/
6/18/2023 Weekly Update
Last Week
- The board held its regular monthly meeting on 6/14/2023. The main focus was approving the budget for school year ’23-24. I’m still pouring through some details so will have more on that later. The board did not move the meeting to a larger space, though everyone who wanted to attend was admitted as there was no organized appearance of Charis students like the 5/10 meeting (which left ~100 people standing out in the rain).
- We noticed an interesting link between board member Kimbrell and a Moms For Liberty leader in Colorado Springs.
- Gateway Elementary won the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award! The district made no announcement of this though…I have CORA requests pending to try to figure out why.
- The WPSD board is no stranger to ‘serial meetings’…meeting one on one in private to skirt open meetings laws. A court case in Douglass County threatens to put an end to that strategy.
- We’re seeing similar turmoil in other school districts…one in Texas being the latest example.
- KOAA reported on the expansion of mental health screenings in Colorado schools (except for a few like WPSD).
Here’s what’s coming up this week:
- The next regular board meeting will be in August. The board met in executive session on 6/14 to discuss security arrangements though, so it wouldn’t be surprising for them to schedule a meeting before the end of the fiscal year to implement a new program, if they reach consensus on one and if it will affect the budget. So we’ll be watching for a last minute meeting scheduled in June.
- School may be out, but this is a time to dig deeper to check into some things the district is doing. So stay tuned for more.
- Three people have announced their intention to run for school board against the three incumbents up for reelection. I haven’t heard much since that original article in the Courier, but expect that as the summer goes by, their campaign efforts will ramp up. I’ve looked into these candidates and think they’ll be great board members!
Gateway Elementary wins Colorado Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award
I stumbled upon a bit of a surprise today…the CDE’s website shows Gateway Elementary received the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award for 2022! Congratulations, Gateway! Great job! The press release from the CDE came out on May 18, 2023, and can be read here. As I understand it, this award is given out in the spring for test scores from the previous year (hence it’s listed as 2022).
What’s puzzling is why I find zero mention of this on the district’s website. Here’s their press release section as of today:
Best guess, is that with the press release in May, the district probably found out much sooner than that…I’ll submit a CORA request to try to learn more and will update this post with what I find. We know they’ve been trying to downplay Gateway and even tried handing it off to be operated by a charter school business earlier in 2023. It’d be hard to convince the community to hand off Gateway like that if it was known to be recognized by the Governor for its accomplishments.
Politics and education clash as Texas district sees teachers leave
As school districts grapple with teacher shortages, NBC News’ Antonia Hylton takes us to a Texas town where frustrations over banned books, restrictions on race and identity lessons have contributed to a 40 percent increase in staff resignations and retirements.
— Read on www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/politics-and-education-clash-as-texas-district-sees-teachers-leave-182508101519
The turmoil in WPSD is happening elsewhere, too. Watch this story about events in a Texas school district.
Colorado public schools consider optional mental health tests for minors
Under HB23-1003, public schools can opt-in to offer students a free yearly mental health screening.
Woodland Park School District (WPSD) has told us it is not participating.
— Read on www.koaa.com/news/covering-colorado/colorado-public-schools-consider-optional-mental-health-tests-for-minors
6/11/2023 Weekly Update
Last Week:
- There’s a new reporter looking into our district, Logan Davis with the Colorado Times Recorder. You can read his first article here.
- The WPSD class of 2024 took the SAT test this spring, and results are in – they set a new district record, and scored above state average!
- The district hosted a job fair on 6/10; we’re told that four applicants showed up. There are currently 56 openings in the district. The staffing shortage in the district appears quite bleak. We learned more about the staffing levels, especially with regards to special ed programs, via leaks from various insiders; you can read more about that here.
- A CORA request revealed the list of words that, if used in an email to the board or superintendent, will cause your email to be automatically rejected. You can view it here. Free speech has limits with this board.
- Last April, the WPSD board spoke out against a Colorado bill to expand mental health screenings to all students. Their resolution was virtually identical to that from some other Colorado school districts. Now, Moms For Liberty (regarded by some as a hate group) is taking credit for helping to get this resolution passed and is confirming that attorney Brad Miller wrote it. It is not a creation of the WPSD board at all, it looks like we were just being used as pawns.
- The district released its preliminary FY24 budget and will discuss it on 6/14. One thing noticed was only $50k allocated to legal expenses; that’s only enough to last 2-3 months at Brad Miller’s current burn rate. There’s $100k allocated to implementing a ‘Capturing Kids Hearts‘ program in the district, something we’re looking into more as it’s not without controversy and, naturally, has not been discussed in board meetings or with the community at all so far. The district did not publish notice of the budget in the Courier as required by law, so discussing this on 6/14 appears to be illegal.
Here’s what’s coming up this week:
- The next school board meeting is Wednesday, 6/14, 6:00, in the district office conference room. We’ve asked the board and superintendent if they will move the meeting to the auditorium or elsewhere with greater capacity, but have not received any replies. Note that since the budget will be discussed in this meeting, Colorado Law states that any taxpayer in the district is entitled to attend this meeting. It’s not clear if watching via a one-way video conference (livestream) would count as ‘attending’. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘attend’ as ‘to be present at’ or ‘to go to’. The law suggest they would not be allowed to refuse entry to taxpayers like they did in the 5/10 meeting.
Moms For Liberty Claiming Credit For School Districts Opting-Out of State-Funded Student Mental Health Services
According to a May 15 Facebook post from Darcy Schoening in the “Moms For Liberty — El Paso County” Facebook group, the author is “The infamous attorney Brad Miller, who’s been working hard around the state to urge conservative boards to adopt common sense policies such as the Parental Bill of Rights, a HB23-1003 opt out, and a resolution to oppose the anti-capitalist teachers unions.”
— Read on coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/06/moms-for-liberty-claiming-credit-for-school-districts-opting-out-of-state-funded-student-mental-health-services/54024/
Brad Miller has been running the show in Woodland Park since day one…